What is recorded here

Structure B in Manorland measured seventeen by twelve metres, yet its walls rose no higher than two metres and displayed no doorways or windows. Sweetman called it a thirteenth-century build, but Hayden argued the unfaced lower stones were merely trench foundations inserted through an older keep. A parallel seventeenth-century wall may have completed its north side, transforming the bare rectangle into the competent house James Carroll leased in 1611. The oven beside it still waits for someone to explain why a large chamber needed no visible entrance.

The ward of the castle provided space for various buildings or structures, dating largely to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but a precise date cannot be provided in most instances. This large structure (B) (ext. dims c. 17m E-W; c. 12m N-S) is defined by masonry walls (max. H 2m) on every side except that its NE wall is open to interpretation. It has no apparent features such as doorways or window openings but is situated between the two terminals of the ring-work fosse. Its unfaced foundations (H 0.5m) rest on the subsoil, and it was interpreted as a thirteenth century structure by the excavator (Sweetman 1978, 133-5). However, Hayden (2011, 66-69) interprets the unfaced lower parts of the walls as foundations which would have been in a trench, and posits that an extensive mortar layer below the level of the wall footings relates to the construction of the keep through which the foundations of structure B were inserted. No artefacts provide any direct dating evidence, but even Sweetman identified seventeenth century work in the upper parts of the walls. Sweetman’s Wall F, which is probably seventeenth century in date, is parallel with the S wall of structure B, and could provide its N wall. Therefore a seventeenth century date might be applied to the whole structure, including its oven (Structure C), and Hayden even suggests that it could have been ‘the competent and convenient house’ which James Carroll, lord mayor of Dublin, was required to build in a lease of the manor in 1611 (ibid. 275). Compiled by: Michael Moore See the attached view of structure B from NE Date of upload: 11 July 2019

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